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Friday, December 2, 2011

Zach Parise will get his homecoming game tonight in Minnesota, but Travis Zajac will miss out on his first chance to play an NHL game in his hometown when the Devils visit Winnipeg Saturday night.

It will be the Devils’ first game in Winnipeg since a 5-3 loss on Dec. 29, 1995. The Devils were defending Stanley Cup champions at the time. Those Jets moved to Phoenix the next season and became the Coyotes. The Jets were reincarnated this season after the Atlanta Thrashers moved to Winnipeg.

Zajac is recovering from Aug. 18 surgery to repair a torn left Achilles tendon, however, and after spending most of the first two months of the season doing his rehab in Winnipeg, he returned to New Jersey last week to step up the intensity of his on-ice and off-ice workouts with the objective of starting to practice with the team next week.

So, while the Devils are playing in Winnipeg Saturday, Zajac will have to watch it on television with an eye on being there for the Devils’ Jan. 14 game at MTS Centre.

“Bad scheduling on his part,” Parise joked this morning.

Being more serious, Parise said he feels bad for Zajac that he won’t be able to play Saturday.

“He was excited once he saw the Jets were coming back and right away he was talking about being able to go back there and play,” Parise said. “So, I definitely feel for him when he doesn’t have that opportunity, but the good thing is we have to go there when he should be playing next time.”

If Zajac is able to practice with the team next week – possibly as early as Monday – he should be back in the lineup before Christmas.

Zajac isn’t the only Manitoba native on the Devils, though. Defenseman Bryce Salvador is from Brandon and said he’ll have “30-plus” friends and family members at MTS Centre Saturday watching from a luxury box as he plays his first NHL game in his home province.

“It’s definitely exciting to go back,” Salvador said. “Who’d have thought the NHL would go back to Winnipeg?”

Salvador said his family made the hour and 25-minute drive from Brandon to Winnipeg to see the Jets play “a few” times when he was a kid.

“No matter what year it is, it always seems no matter what generation, tickets are expensive,” Salvador said laughing. “That’s all relative. But I remember going to some games.”

Salvador, now 35, was finishing up his junior career in Lethbridge (Alberta) when the Jets moved to Phoenix following the 1995-96 season. He had already been drafted by Tampa Bay in 1994 and had his focus on his own NHL career.

The news that the Jets were leaving wasn’t even a shock.

“They had been talking about it for some time,” Salvador said. “Everything just made so much sense back then, moving to the states, all the easy money.”

After the Jets left town, he never thought he’d get the chance to play an NHL game in his home province. When it became official on May 31, Salvador was among those who were excited.

“I think the whole province was excited,” he said. “The tickets sold out in how many minutes. And fans weren’t just buying season tickets (for one year). They were buying them for five years. It’s not a huge, big metropolitan area. I didn’t even know if there would be that kind of corporate support, but you’ve seen it. It’s exciting. They’re getting fan support.”

Saturday’s game will also be a sort of homecoming for Johan Hedberg, who will get the start in net. Hedberg played parts of three seasons for the Manitoba Moose, which played their home games at old Winnipeg Arena.

Hedberg played 14 games for the Moose in the IHL in 1997-98 and 46 in 2000-01. In fact, Hedberg got his “Moose” nickname because he was still wearing his Moose mask after he was traded to Pittsburgh on March 12, 2001 and Penguins’ fans picked up on it and started the “Mooooose!” call that has followed him ever since.

Hedberg then went back to Manitoba for two games in 2003-04 when Moose were Vancouver’s AHL affiliate.

“I had a great experience,” Hedberg said of playing in Winnipeg. “It was actually my first year over in North America. I got traded during the (1998) Olympics and finished out the year in Manitoba and two years later I went back there when San Jose assigned me to that team. It was fun. It’s a great hockey town. People are very friendly, very positive about hockey, so it’s going to be fun going back and seeing the excitement they have now when they finally have their team back.”

Hedberg isn’t sure if the Winnipeg fans will remember his time there when he plays Saturday night.

“I think I had a good year there, but it’s not like I made a mark,” he said. “There might be a few of my friends there.”

Hedberg also still knows many of the Jets’ players from his four seasons with the Thrashers, but says he sees the team now as the Jets.

“I see them as the Jets for sure,” he said. “In a lot of ways I have a lot of connections to all of it. I played for Atlanta. I played in Winnipeg. I have a lot of friends on (the team). But the Thrashers are gone, unfortunately. But it’s pretty cool. I like their jerseys. I think it’s going to be a great atmosphere in there. It’s going to be a fun game.”

***The Devils went 3-12-3 in games in Winnipeg against the original Jets. Martin Brodeur and Petr Sykora are the only current Devils that were with them when they played their last game in Winnipeg.

About

TOM GULITTI has covered the New Jersey Devils for The Record since 2002. Prior to that, he covered the New York Rangers for four years. Gulitti joined The Record in 1998 after six years at The North Jersey Herald News. He graduated from Binghamton University in 1991 with a Bachelor of Arts in Rhetoric-Literature.